- The president, vice-president, and Brett Giroir of the PHSCC made frequent attacks on Maryland Governor Larry Hogan regarding testing. Hogan recently made a large purchase of tests from South Korea as the federal government has not been able to provide what he needs for his state. During the press briefing, they repeatedly said Maryland has unused testing capacity and maybe Hogan didn’t understand that. Hogan understood that. What’s happening here is a rhetorical sleight of hand the administration has been utilizing for months. There are plenty of labs with testing CAPACITY. That isn’t where the bottleneck is. What we do not have are enough supplies to actually conduct tests. Swabs are a great example. It doesn’t matter how much lab capacity you have if you can’t take a sample to test in the first place. Not only did Maryland need more of these supplies, but several of the labs cited by Giroir and Pence as available for Maryland to use were NOT available for Maryland to use until yesterday. We have audio proving Pence and Trump lied about Governor Hogan.
- The administration has been using the same rhetorical trick to boost the number of tests that have been conducted. The White House said 27 million tests would be “into the market” by the end of March. This is referring to capacity if all the needed supplies were available, which they have not been. Giroir on Monday defending using that metric.
- With one of his most frequent Covid-19 lies, the president said again the US has done more testing than all other countries combined. This is not true on an absolute metric and isn’t even close to true on a per capita basis.
- Yamiche Alcindor asked if Trump’s frequent downplaying of the severity of the virus caused people to get sick. His response was to say that a lot of people loved him and he expects to win the November election in a landslide. Alcindor asked about the rallies he held in February and March. Trump lied that he had not left the White House in months. When Alcindor again pointed out the president had a rally in March he downplayed the action.
- The president blamed impeachment for the state of the pandemic in the United States. The impeachment trial was over at the beginning of February. Weeks later, the president said there were only 15 cases in the United States and that number would soon be going down to zero.
- Asked about large corporations taking PPP money intended for small businesses, the president immediately responds that his companies did not take any. (This is true but bizarre)
- The president said there has been NO discussion about whether companies that reopen will face liability for getting people sick.
- The president said he’s already rebuilt the economy once and can do so again. For years, Trump has suggested the economy was in terrible shape when he took office. The economy had been roaring for years when Trump took office:
